Watercolours
by cliffrose-acetone
Summary: John wakes up from a nightmare. Fluff one-shot.


John wished he couldn't remember it when he woke up, but he could still hear the echo of voices and his last words ringing in his ears when he opened his eyes to the darkness of the room. His heart was still hammering in his chest when he pulled himself out of the nightmare, and for a moment he stared up at the ceiling for a while as he tried to calm himself down. Those were the kind of nightmares that John hated; the recurring ones when he knew that he could have pulled out at any time and saved himself the pain, but where he stayed to watch as if something different would happen. It took John a while, after waking up and berating himself for letting the dream go on, for him to remember the man beside him.

Sherlock was still asleep, or at least he appeared to be- he was curled on his side with his back to John, his shoulders rising and falling slowly in sleep. For a while, John just let his fingers hover over Sherlock's skin, trailing down along his spine to the base of his back and up to his shoulder, before his arm curled around the detective's waist. He shifted closer but didn't dare to close his eyes again. He could still see the blood- deep crimson to the point of black- when he blinked, and he forced himself to concentrate on the man still breathing in his arms- on the paleness of his skin in the dim light, the tired scent and warmth and the heartbeat in his throat that John could feel under his lips when he pressed a kiss there.

But it was only a minute or two after John had slung his arm around Sherlock's waist when his breathing changed. He felt it- he was close enough that he immediately noticed Sherlock's breathing speed up slightly as he shifted awake, and John tensed. John didn't want to wake him. Sherlock slept more now than ever, but John didn't want to ruin the progress by disturbing the man with his own trivial little problems. It was just a nightmare. That was all.

But Sherlock turned onto his back anyway, and frowned as he struggled to open his eyes against his own exhaustion. He didn't say anything for a while- long enough that John thought he'd drifted off again and had only moved in his sleep- but he finally reached out a tired hand to try and find John's face.

"You thought they were gone," Sherlock whispered, his eyebrows furrowing as he felt tension in John's muscles. "The nightmares." John leaned into the hand that cupped his face, but didn't answer. He didn't think he could.

Sherlock managed to crack an eye open to peer at John through the dark. "I didn't expect them to be," he continued, as his thumb stroked against John's cheek.

John waited until Sherlock managed to open both eyes before he moved his hand to the other's face. For a while they were both quiet enough to hear the distant yell of voices in the distance, the cars that drove past, and the sleepy creak of the pipes in the flat. They didn't matter. Nothing mattered to John more in that moment than the hand on his face (rough and calloused in some places from chemicals and years of violin playing), the eyes that never left his (gray in the soft light from the streetlamps), the lips that John's thumb brushed over and the dark curls that wrapped around his fingers when he moved his hand to the detective's hair.

Sherlock was his. He could never forget that.

Eventually, John tipped his head forwards to leave a kiss on the other man's lips. He lingered there, feeling Sherlock's breath against his mouth.

Sherlock wasn't the kind of person who appreciated sentiment. John was painfully aware of this fact, of course, since it was the whole reason why he'd hesitated for weeks before initiating something like this. This was something that John had only hoped for. He didn't dare ask for anything else. He was happier now than he could ever remember being.

But there they were, those words that he had forgotten the meaning of, or how potent they could be when they were spoken the way they were. And they hung in the air and clung to his skin where they were painted against his lips, and for a while he couldn't find the obvious words to respond to Sherlock's whispered, "I love you."

Sherlock didn't need a response. He understood.


End file.
